The Political Correspondence of Esarhaddon.

• Author: Porter, Barbara Nevling

The Political Correspondence of Esarhaddon. BY MIKKO LUUKKO AND GRETA VAN BUYLABRE, State Archives of Assyria, vol. 16. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 2002. Pp. Iv + 221, illus.

This excellent new edition completes the State Archives of Assyria publication of the correspondence of King Esarhaddon written in Neo-Assyrian and found at Nineveh; its appearance (followed since by the publication of Esarhaddon's Babylonian correspondence) removes one of the last major obstacles to a detailed and comprehensive study of the reign of this important Assyrian king.

The main part of the volume consists of transliterations, lively English translations, and brief philological notes on 136 letters written to King Esarhaddon (nos. 14-47 and 59-156), and thirteen letters or orders written by him (nos. 1-13), plus 10 letters (nos. 48-58) requesting help or favors from various Assyrian officials or addressing private persons. None of the letters are dated, but many are roughly datable by references to the crown princes or to recognizable events (as Laid out in the table, pp. xviii-xx). These letters are followed by an addendum consisting of thirteen letters now identified as belonging with those from scholars and priests published earlier in SAA 10 and 13 (nos. 165-77), plus sixty-nine fragmentary letters (nos. 178-247, all but three of them with no trace of their author's name) that are tentatively assigned to the reign of Esarhaddon, or perhaps that of Sargon II. (p. xliv).

All but ten of the letters and fragments in the volume have been published previously (but all too often in courageous but badly flawed and inaccurate early editions, as Assyriologists have long been painfully aware). The transliterations of the ten new pieces were prepared by Simo Parpola, who also edited twenty of the letters originally assigned to the series' Assurbanipal volume; the authors also credit him with numerous helpful suggestions. Copies of nine of the previously unpublished pieces (the tenth is too fragmentary) were made by Van Buylaere and are published on pp. 217-18. Mikko Luukko and Greta Van Buylaere are credited with the transliteration and translation of all of the remaining letters published here, and together are also responsible for the thoughtful philological and historical analysis in the introduction.

The volume's title characterizes these letters as "political," but the term is a gallant attempt to impose unity on a wonderful hodgepodge of texts, running...